LET'S HELP OTHERS : BECOME A VOLUNTEER
LET'S HELP OTHERS : BECOME A VOLUNTEER
Photographs from St. Mary's Kibara Hospital: the wards and imaging rooms, the sisters and medical staff who run them, and the outreach visits that carry care into the surrounding villages.
Patients waiting to be seen.
Meeting patients during a community outreach
Dr. Pendo Faustine, Medical Officer in charge of the hospital
Medical staff at St. Mary's Kibara Hospital
The patients' ward
The maternity ward
A sister at the ultrasound machine in the imaging room
Entrance to the X-ray and ultrasound rooms
The drip making unit
The hospital signboard at the entrance in Kibara
St. Mary's Kibara Hospital serves the community of Bunda District, where it stands in Kibara Ward, and the Mara Region as a whole. It also cares for people from further afield, including Ukerewe Island in the Mwanza Region and other parts of Tanzania, and it treats everyone who comes through its doors regardless of religious denomination.
Established in October 1962 by the Misereor missionary sisters, the hospital passed in 1972 to the Daughters of Mary Congregation Sisters of Tabora while remaining under the Catholic Archdiocese of Mwanza. In 2011, when the Archdiocese of Mwanza and the Diocese of Musoma were divided to form the Catholic Diocese of Bunda, the hospital came under this diocese. It is run today by the Daughters of Mary Congregation Sisters from Kipalapala, Tabora, together with the Benedictine Sisters from Mwanza, and has now completed 64 years of service.
Patients come to St. Mary's Kibara for any of the following:
The hospital's patients are mothers, children, and the elderly, alongside people living with chronic illness such as tuberculosis, schistosomiasis, and sexually transmitted diseases, road accident victims, and families in remote areas with few other options for care.
Most arrive at the walk-in clinics, but the hospital also goes out to them, through mobile outreach, community health workers, and a referral network that connects surrounding villages to the wards at Kibara. Radio and church announcements carry word of clinics and outreach visits to communities that would not otherwise hear of them.
In 2025 the hospital served 12,281 patients and assisted 408 deliveries. In 2026 it expects to reach roughly 14,000 patients and 500 deliveries. Care here is faith based and culturally sensitive, offered alongside spiritual support, and no one is turned away on the basis of their denomination.
The hospital serves under real constraints, and support goes directly toward closing these gaps:
In their own words, from patients and staff who have lived alongside St. Mary's Kibara Hospital.
Now my health is going well.
Mr. Leonard remembers when the area around Kibara was known as Namibu, and malaria was a chronic presence there with no health services within reach. The hospital has stood here since 1962. Since 2015 he has been treated regularly for a spinal condition and other related illnesses.
I was treated at Kibara Hospital during my pregnancies with two of my children, Anthony Mgoela, now 25, and Jema Maiga, now 22. The treatment was very nice and I was treated well, and all my children were safe.
Veronica's connection to the hospital did not end there. St. Mary's Kibara trained her in pre-nursing from 1993 to 1994. She worked as a medical attendant at Nyamuswa Ikizu Mission from 1994 to 2004, joined the hospital's own staff in 2004, and later continued her studies at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University. Because of St. Mary's Kibara, she says, she has been able to sustain her family as one of the hospital's employees, educate her children, and meet their other needs.
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